3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  Brigit was still gazing at the shelves as if trying to decide something. Rhia stood up and walked the length of the room and back, twice. She wanted to ask about the letter, but her mother seemed too deep in thought. When Brigit turned round, she looked wretched.

  ‘Rhiannon.’ She only called Rhia this when something was wrong.

  ‘I know about the letter. I read it,’ Rhia said.

  ‘I knew you would. Today I asked your father to tell me the truth. We were in debt to several creditors before the fire, which is why the rather expensive assurance policy was cancelled. A false economy, as it turns out. The loss of the stock and storehouse has ruined us. We have agreed that we must sell this house and move permanently to Greystones.’

  Rhia was not prepared for this. She walked over to the window. The fog had lifted and the Green was lively with costermongers and nannies with black hooded prams. Her composure fell away. ‘Why didn’t he tell us?’

  Brigit looked at her imploringly. ‘Don’t be angry. He was ashamed. He believes he has managed the business badly, but it is simply a result of the times. Our methods are becoming old-fashioned. It is not so awful. We are blessed to have Greystones. You always wanted to spend more time there.’

  Rhia tried to grasp what this all meant. ‘But how will we live?’

  ‘We will manage. You forget that I spun wool before I met your father; I still have deft fingers and there are Mamo’s sheep. Thomas Kelly can weave a broadcloth as fine as any I have seen, and Michael will have served his sentence by next summer.’

  Rhia struggled to take it all in. It was now clear why her father had been so angry over her broken engagement. She felt like a criminal. ‘And I turned William O’Donahue against me.’

  Brigit shook her head firmly. ‘A man such as he would probably have dishonoured the engagement once the state of our affairs was known. You were lucky to escape that, though I would never say so in front of your father.’ There was little she would dare to say in front of her husband. Mamo had always been disgusted by it.

  Brigit had said nothing of Ryan’s proposal. Surely she wouldn’t want Rhia to go? She would want her to stay and spin wool. The offer was tainted, anyway, by the governess thing, and besides, she was not nearly clever enough. The only Latin that interested her was the names of plants, and her French was poor. ‘What about London?’ she ventured.

  ‘You would have to spend a night and a day at sea to reach Holyhead.’

  Rhia shuddered. It was settled, then.

  Brigit kissed her on the forehead, then left her alone to wrap herself in whatever cloth this day of change might represent.

  Rhia absently rolled up a bolt of pretty jacquard that was on the cutting table and picked bits of thread from the floor. She glimpsed herself in London. She had always dreamed that she would visit the capital with her husband, travel being one of the few advantages in having a husband at all. Of course, the likelihood of marrying was increasingly remote, and her dreams always conveniently overlooked the inevitable sea crossing.

  As to love, it was clearly a condition that had originated in the minds, rather than the hearts, of poets. Everyone knew that aside from a dowry and annuity, husbands preferred a tepid nature and an agreeable tongue. Or a tongue that always agreed. These were graces that Rhia neither possessed nor could become interested in fostering. What was to love in that? Perhaps she was destined to be a governess living in the house of a Quaker after all.

  Satin

  On the way to Pudding Lane, Antonia Blake was inconveniently overcome by emotion. She took out her handkerchief, neatly side-stepping some unidentifiable filth in the street (one advantage in having one’s gaze cast down).

  On certain days it seemed that she had only just received the news of Josiah’s death. Today was such a day. She focused her mind fiercely on short ends of ribbon and bias binding. The theatrical costumer had seemed pleased when she first approached him. Not because he had heard of prison reform or Elizabeth Fry’s charitable works, but because it relieved him of the extra bother of disposing of unusable cloth. All the better of course, he said, if it was put to some purpose beyond rag picking.

  The Pudding Lane costume workshop was a cluttered front room, in the corner of which was a trestle table and a huddle of straw and cloth mannequins. Onto these was pinned and stitched all manner of regalia; the buttons and braid of a Napoleonic tunic, a cascade of scalloped flounces for a Shakespearean heroine and an ass’s head made from horsehair.

  Antonia always felt acutely plain when she visited the costumer. He made no secret of his fascination with the lack of ornament on a woman of means, and his eyes usually roamed unashamedly over the cut and cloth that she wore. She imagined he was, over time, working up the courage to enquire after her faith. Quakerism was clearly something of a mystery to one whose living was derived from the decorative and theatric. He would know that those of her faith refused to bear arms, pay tithes on church land, or take the sacraments, and as such were heretics of a kind. He would also know, as all seemed to, that the Society of Friends excelled in business and were amongst London’s richest bankers and wealthiest merchants. This was all Antonia herself had known about the Friends before she met Josiah Blake.

  It was not to be the day for a conversation of this kind. The costumer was in a state of distress, which was not unusual. He was habitually fearful that he might not complete some assignation or other before a dress rehearsal. Today, a bodice had been cut for an actress whose waist had expanded, following her recent success in Drury Lane. She was, he explained mournfully, sustaining herself on suppers of meat pies and cream cakes rather than the bread and tea she had used to make do with. The costumer gave Antonia her sack of cloth with only a cursory glance at her grey linen and starched white collar. As he did, he complained of the complexities of inserting a panel of satin so that the elegant line of the décolletage was not lost. She could not help but take a step closer to his table and look at the pieces of the troublesome bodice. She was relieved to have something, a salve, to occupy her mind.

  ‘It might be that you could insert two narrow panels here and here instead,’ she suggested, ‘then it would look as if you were deliberately making something of the new seams.’ The sweaty little man was staring at her with utter disbelief. She did not look like she knew a thing about the cut of a corsage. Antonia laughed at his expression. ‘My father is a mercer,’ she explained. ‘There are often shirtmakers and seamstresses in his showroom, measuring silk around their paper pieces so as not to waste an inch of precious cloth. I no longer take an interest in fashionable clothing, but I hope that I still have an eye for silhouette and … contour.’

  ‘You have indeed. You are most gracious to share your expert eye with me, Mrs Blake. Why, I believe you have solved the riddle of the thing! Is your father a London mercer?’

  ‘His emporium is in Manchester.’

  ‘Then you will have come to London when you married.’ It was a clever means of extracting information without appearing to enquire.

  ‘Yes. My late husband was a cotton trader. The trade was how we came to meet.’

  The costumer looked embarrassed. ‘I am sorry for your loss. I did not realise.’

  There was no salve. Why, today of all days, should she have to be reminded? ‘You could not,’ she said quickly. ‘And I must be getting on. As ever, our organisation is most grateful.’ Antonia hurried away before her composure was undone by a conversation with a relative stranger. She was overcome by small things. She could still not completely believe him gone. How could he be gone?

  Josiah had upheld the excellent reputation of Quaker merchants and was a man of his word. He had been among the first to voice an opinion on the trade ban with China. It was a Quaker ship that had triggered the sea battle that now raged near Canton. The captain of the Thomas Coutts had refused to acknowledge that the British Navy’s blockade of the Pearl River, preventing Chinese trading vessels from passing, was legal. The Pearl River was the only means of r
eaching Canton, the most important port in the East. The Blakes, like all Quakers, considered themselves outside of the dispute between the Emperor of China and the British East India traders. They were bringing cotton and wool into Canton, not opium.

  When she was seated in the privacy of a Hackney cab surrounded by her bags of cloth, Antonia leaned back and wept. She had been mercifully distracted at the costumers, but in the dark privacy of the carriage there was no longer the need to pretend. She need only be composed by the time she reached the Montgomery emporium, her next appointment. Composure, like charity, whether heartfelt or not, was her shield. Beneath it skulked fear and loneliness, always measuring her faith and her strength.

  When her handkerchief was wringing wet and her eyes dry, Antonia felt calmed. She straightened her back. There were women in far greater misery than she, locked away in pitiful conditions in dank, subterranean cells. Some waited to be hanged, and others to be sent far away from their children. It should fortify her to think that, by her hand, the suffering of another might lessen.

  Antonia was cheered to find Mr Montgomery on the shop floor in his shirt sleeves. Mr Beckwith was up a ladder arranging bolts of pearly silk and sleek cashmere. Grace Elliot, the assistant, was behind the counter, her face drawn as tightly as her stays. Antonia was accustomed to her airs. It was a peculiarity of Londoners that they were affronted by appearances to the point of prejudice. Northerners were more robust in their judgement, and not so easily fooled by a myrtle green petticoat or a candy stripe bonnet.

  Mr Montgomery smiled so warmly when he saw her that she felt her heart lurch.

  ‘Mrs Blake! What a happy coincidence that I should be here for your visit. I have asked Miss Elliot to put aside some remnants for you. Is your carriage on Regent Street?’ He turned to Mr Beckwith, who had come down the ladder and was smiling shyly at Antonia. ‘Francis, would you bring the sacks from the storeroom?’

  They were as unalike as two gentlemen could possibly be. Mr Montgomery was tall and lean with an abundance of pewter hair and a fondness for Savile Row tailors. It was unusual to see him without his coat and, in spite of herself, Antonia admired the breadth of his shoulders. Francis Beckwith was slight and balding, his mud-coloured suits always ill-fitting. Josiah had considered Beckwith the cleverer of the two; he’d thought that, without Beckwith, Montgomery would not be known as king of the mercers.

  ‘Tell me, Mrs Blake, what progress have you made with Mr Talbot’s mysterious potion? I admit that I am baffled by it, though it has captured the imagination of London as thoroughly as a scandal.’ He was looking at her as though her opinion on such things mattered.

  ‘It does seem to be the latest sensation, doesn’t it?’ Photogenic drawing had captivated her from the moment Laurence, Josiah’s cousin, showed her his experiments with the calotype process. After that, she begged Laurence to instruct her every time he visited. She still found it extraordinary that light could pass through a small brown box and form a picture on the wall opposite. But to now be able to transfer the light onto paper, as Fox Talbot’s famous innovation could, was simply wondrous. Laurence had been lodging in the house since the news of Josiah’s death, and the entire third floor was now their calo-type laboratory.

  ‘Speaking of photogenic drawing, what of our experiment?’ Mr Montgomery was smiling. He had no idea what he was asking of her. She was surprised, also, that he considered the experiment to be theirs. He had been merely one of her subjects. Mr Montgomery was conveniently distracted by a customer. How could he understand? Early in the spring, just before Josiah had sailed for Calcutta, Antonia had decided that she wanted to take her experimentation a step further; to capture a negative image via its exposure to light. On a bright day soon after, several of Josiah’s colleagues, including Mr Montgomery, gathered at Cloak Lane to discuss a joint venture. Antonia had, that day, not only asked the gentlemen gathered to donate cloth scraps and factory ends to the Convict Ship Committee, but also to be her subjects. In the spirit of supporting the new science (or perhaps to humour her), five gentlemen, including Josiah, allowed themselves to be arranged in a tableau in the garden.

  The negative was now carefully preserved in a silk wallet, as advised by Laurence. The paper looked no different at all after its exposure, though he said this was normal. And now, with the recent arrival of her licence, Antonia finally had permission to bring the image to paper. Or, to use the expression coined by Mr Talbot, to make a representation. How could she, though? How could she bear to see Josiah’s face gazing back at her, as though a ghostly portrait had been painted after his death. One day she would feel brave enough to expose the negative, and Josiah’s face, to the light. She would be exposing her heart to the truth in a more tangible way than her faith had ever done. Grief, Isaac said, eventually evolved from refutal to acceptance. He would know.

  Mr Beckwith returned from the storeroom lugging two bulging sacks. While he fastened them, Antonia noted that Mr Montgomery had donated some exceedingly high grade remainders. He had been more generous than usual since Josiah’s death. For this, Antonia liked him even more. Too much, perhaps. The pattern on a roll of jacquard caught her attention and she drew closer to examine it. When she looked up Mr Montgomery was watching her.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it? French of course, but one day I will have my very own collection.’ He was interrupted by another customer, so Antonia thanked Mr Beckwith and left hastily. She was not herself.

  When she was back in the quiet of her carriage, she ordered her thoughts. She might soon have another lodger. By Ryan’s description, his niece Rhia was an unconventional young woman. Had she been hasty in inviting a stranger and a foreigner into her house? Antonia sighed at her own fearfulness. She should be hopeful rather than anxious. It would be enjoyable to have a female companion with whom she could discuss the trade, rather than the quantities of vinegar and linseed oil required for furniture polish.

  Antonia delivered her cloth at the Meeting House and took weak tea with the sombre British Ladies Society, as the convict committee liked to call themselves. Quakerism had, at least, saved her from the helplessness of her gender and class. She approved of the Quaker view that equality and respect were due to women. The integrity of God’s guidance was, of late, a more difficult ideal to uphold. Without Josiah, how could she now be certain of it?

  Her gaze shifted and she became aware of the passing view. This part of the City of London was always humming with activity. The Gracechurch Meeting House was in between Lloyds Bank and the Bank of England and only two streets away from the Royal Exchange. All along Lombard and Cornhill were coffee houses where bankers, merchants and stock jobbers met to discuss the shipping news and the international marketplace; to buy and sell Jamaican sugar, West Indian tobacco, Australian wool and China tea. Antonia lived in the City and passed through the banking district almost every day, but she never grew tired of it. There was an invigorating briskness to the quarter that may well have as much to do with the amount of coffee consumed as with the nature of its industry.

  As she passed the Jerusalem Coffee House, she was certain that she saw Isaac through the window. It was hard to mistake him. He was a large man; not corpulent, but tall and broad of frame. He was deep in conversation with another gentleman, whom she recognised as one of the bankers at Barings. Josiah had forsaken all ties with this bank upon discovering that currency from the sale of opium was deposited in its vaults. For the use of the Crown. Antonia was startled. Why would her husband’s close friend, a Quaker, have reason to meet with such a man? She turned away, chastising herself for her lack of trust. Of course Isaac would have a perfectly sensible and morally sound reason for his actions. She was not herself.

  Calico

  Juliette inspected herself in the only looking-glass in the house. The sight did not cheer her. Mrs Blake only ever used the glass in the hallway to fasten her bonnet or brush lint from her dull costumes. It was a shame for someone like Mrs Blake to be without vanity. To have the purse for si
lk but to choose wool seemed against the natural order of things. Surely the whole point of wealth was in flaunting it. Her mistress was pleasant-looking, though certainly no stunner, and would look well in India green or Lavinia blue.

  Juliette leaned a little closer to the glass and smoothed her flyaway brown hair. She looked every bit as unquiet as she felt, though she tried so hard not to be anxious. Ever since Beth said fretting made the flesh flee from your bones. If the reverse were also true, then it explained the scullery maid’s contented roundness. Beth’s cheeks were like pink apples and she had a beam as round as a laundry tub beneath her black calico skirts. Black did nothing for Juliette. Today, her narrow face had a red spot high on each cheek and her forehead looked like crumpled linen. She examined her every angle and flaw until her gaze reached her hands. Her knuckles were as white as a boiled joint from the fastness of her grip where she clutched the letter.

  She turned away from the disappointing portrait in the glass and marched the length of the hall. She did this another three times before she heard the jingling and huffing of carriage horses, and then the clip of sensible boots on the stone stair.

  Immediately, Mrs Blake looked concerned, which made Juliette feel better.

  ‘Is something amiss, Juliette dear?’

  ‘Not amiss. Not exactly. But the afternoon post has come …’ Juliette took the grey mantle and the grey kid gloves, noticing the unnatural shine to Mrs Blake’s eyes. She had been weeping again. She showed no other sign of it though; she was not one for self-pity.

  ‘It has arrived!’

  ‘Well the postage mark is Sydney Town.’ Juliette’s voice quivered. This letter had been long awaited.